Hey, what's up, guys?
David Glenn for theproaudiofiles.com and davidglennrecording.com, home of the free VIP mix training bundle.
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of free content that will be coming your way.
But in today's video, we're going to be taking a look at an overview of some drum automation
on a track I'm mixing.
It's called “Won't Stop Believing.”
It's from a super talented producer friend of mine, Victor Encarnacion.
He's working with a church out of Chicago, I believe it's called Marinatha church in
Chicago.
Forgive me if I said that incorrectly, but I just kind of want to walk through, because
we talk about mixing kick drums, mixing snares, mixing with parallel compression, and the
drum crush, and all of this kind of stuff that we've got going on with the drum tutorials.
I mean, it's endless what you can search for and find.
I haven't seen too many about drum automation, so I figured I'd kick it off, do some drum
automation tutorials, and kind of walk you through this.
So anyways, first up, I want to take a look at the kick.
Now these drums are programmed drums.
My buddy Vic, he's a big Native Instruments Komplete Ultimate user, and so I think he
used Modern Drummer in this song, and they sounded okay, but I did make the decision
to replace the kick, and I replaced the snare with beautiful samples from our friends over
at That Sound.
You can check out iwantthatsound.com.
Best drum samples in the business.
Pulling those in with Trigger.
Still, with replacing the drums, I still felt like it needed a little bit more movement.
Even if you've got live kick and live snare, and the drummer played awesome dynamics and
he's got the builds going on, it still can help to have some automation.
Especially once we get in compressing and doing our thing.
So, here's a look at this kick drum without the automation.
Let me turn it off.
I guess I could play some of the song for you guys, that would be beneficial.
Here's a little snippet.
[song plays]
Okay, so we'll look at another section here in a minute, but you can see this kick, without
the automation – come over here and turn it off – you'll just see the stale, steady
placement of this kick drum.
Here it is.
[kick drum plays]
Okay.
Pretty boring, right?
So, let's throw the automation back in while in solo.
[kick drum plays, with automation]
Okay.
It's a little crunchy right there, but I like it.
It sounds good.
Actually, it's programmed drums, so it's really easy to go in – I created a kick/snare flam.
I'm going to show you that.
And the snare is doing the same thing.
It's kind of got the build.
Now, the snare originally came to me with it in playing that whole section there, but
I made a creative decision to not let it build the same with the kick, and I let it come
in half way through.
It's kind of a glitch gone good.
The trigger didn't catch the snares here, because I didn't lift them up, but I actually
liked what it did.
Let me play that for you, you can hear.
[song plays]
Cool.
And then the kick/snare flam stuff at the end there.
I automated the kick up and the snare.
The second hit in this flam up.
[drums play]
Okay.
So, anyways, just showing off kind of the build.
Get a little crescendo there from the kick and snare.
Come out to the right a little bit more and you can see a similar thing going on.
Let me pull them out of solo.
[song plays]
Pretty cool, right?
And I'm going to show you in a minute where I do some drum buss automation that complements
this, but also, if you – in my course mixing drums, check out mixingdrums.com, you'll see
me do this quite a bit with Trigger is to go in with clip gain.
You can see there I've automated the clip gain so that those snares come into play a
little bit more.
You can see as you boost the clip gain – kind of doing a funky curve there – now those
snares will be triggered appropriately by Trigger.
So, moving on out, let's go back to volume automation.
Click over here.
You can see again, there was some clip gain automation on this snare.
Then we've also got the build.
So I've gone throughout the song at the different parts where the drums just felt a little stale,
and I just added some dynamics to them.
Especially here at the end.
Check this one out.
[song]
Pretty sweet, right?
Okay, so the kick and snare are self explanatory.
One more thing with the snare, you can see here there's a nice groove going on.
Okay, but the drummer does a snare fill, and so out here...
You just barely feel that snare come up.
It just kind of comes up in your face.
It has a nice vibe to it.
Pulling it up just a little bit.
We're at -1.3, and I'm going to pull it up to -0.3.
So a dB, and it makes that big of a difference.
So kick and snare.
We talk about that a little bit.
Let's see.
Moving on to the toms, this one was pretty exciting.
I was talking to my buddy Joey.
He's my mastering engineer, and I've got more coming from Joey.
We're going to do an interview here in the next few weeks talking about some stuff that
we've been doing together.
But I was talking to him, and he was giving me some pointers, he was listening to my mix,
kind of, “Hey, at 3:30, drop it 0.7 dB, and at 1:40, do this,” and he was like,
“Hey, you know, I really love the toms, but why don't you do some of that Bob Horn,
Andrew Scheps drum automation, and just kind of push it around and vibe to it?”He was
dead on.
So what I did, these were programmed toms, let me show you the before and after of these.
I'll click through and turn off my processing.
Here's with no automation and no processing.
[toms play]
Okay.
So, not bad, but let's get some stuff going on here.
[toms with processing]
You gotta have these big toms, right?
So, we've got the processing going on.
You want to know about that, e-mail me.
David@davidglenn.com, or I walkthrough that on Mixingdrums.com, so check that out.
But that still wasn't good enough for me, so I'm going to show you the automation.
If you zoom in, I've got this Presonus FaderPort.
I don't know if you guys can see it.
There you go.
Presonus FaderPort.
This thing is awesome for pushing things around and adding some movement to the mix.
So, you can see here I've done that manually.
You could have drawn this in, you can use your mouse.
The Presonus FaderPort is a godsend.
That thing is amazing.
It's only like, what, $150?
I got mine at sale.
It was at Sam Ash, a used thing for like $70.
Anyways, you can see, I've ridden these toms.
I got crazy processing, so they change the sound quite a bit, but then, watch the difference
between off and on.
Here's off.
[toms]
It's one level, right?
Okay, now let's put them in.
Just see the movement, and then beyond the movement, I did what, 150 beats per minute?
I did like, a quarter note pulse.
[toms play with automation]
Okay.
But more importantly, check this out.
So in that vertical movement, I also created a little bit of a dynamic between the sections.
So right there, if we average that out, we're at about what, +2dB or something like that?Watch
what happens when we transition out of the intro into the verse.
[song plays]
So, the toms are still there, but we've backed off a little bit and given a bit more room
for that lead vocal.
By the way, I have to mention, I was told I can share this song, as long as I clarify,
this is a scratch vocal.
The vocals are being sent to me today.
The backgrounds, the lead, everything is scratch.
So there, I clarified it.
[laughs]
Then, listen – just give a little bit of a lift at the end of the first section of
the first verse, we're going to the B section.
[mix]
Just a little bit, right?
Then that builds again.
Here we go.
Get the toms on top.
And then big time.
Pretty sweet, right?
So I've done that throughout the entire song.
I've done that vertical movement, just to get a bit of a random velocity type vibe,
but then also volume up and down throughout the entire track, then out here, there was
one where it was pretty cool.
I did a little clip gain automation, but then I've also got the volume cranked, because
the drummer's just got this – the virtual drummer – has just got this tiny click on
the toms, but it creates this cool resonance with the processing that I've got, so I pulled
that up like crazy.
[song]
And you can feel those crescendos again with the kick and snare.
I did the same thing for the toms there.
Okay, moving on from the toms, I've talked about that enough.
The next bit of automation I've got going on is from the Room Stereo.
Now, I love doing this, I do this on just about every mix when I have drum rooms.
I'm trying to find, “Hey, what's a sweet level to kind of kick things off, or what's
a good level on the chorus, but then let me change that level between sections.”I've
done that here.
You go out of the intro, and I'm going to solo this drum room.
Let me show a before and after real quick of the processing.
[room plays]
Okay, then with the stuff on.
[room with processing]
A little darker, a little meatier, a little fatter.
There's the – my new favorite compressor, the Plus 10 dB from David Bendeth.
This thing is incredible.
Smash it, hit it hard, it's got the limiter built in, so you can compress and limit.
I actually didn't compress here, it's 1:1.
I used the limiter and drove that pretty good, and then brought in some of the dry signal.
I have VMR.
Slate just announced the whole update to VMR.
You've got the Lift and whatever the EQ was.
Some good additions, some more coming soon.
I took a little bit of the top out with the SSL, filtered up to about 100Hz.
No compression on this, but a little bit of Revival.
I can't help but using Revival on just about anything.
Then after that, I've filtered out some stuff in there that was getting in the way of the
direct mic toms.
I felt like the mud from the – well, I call it mud, but the stuff in the midrange from
1-3kHz even it looks like.
I just kind of felt that out and brought some down.
Then Pi is on there from keeping the drums in phase, but then check this out.
From section to section, here's the toms stereo mic coming out of this section into the verse.
[toms play]
Okay.
It's subtle there, but check this out in the mix.
It really makes a difference.
One more time.
Pretty cool, right?
So, it's subtle, but then out here, we're going to lift it back up.
[song]
Then a crescendo.
Pretty sweet, right?
So, we've got that going on.
Next up, I want to take a look at – well, I guess I can show you.
I've blended some samples from That Sound for the cymbals.
What's a good section to show that off...
Probably right here.
Not really automation as much as putting some samples in, but let's check out before and
after.
Here's with no crash samples.
[song plays]
Okay.
So, the original overhead crashes, you know, from the programmed drums, I thought they
sounded good, but I wanted to have a little bit more sustain, and a little bit more action
on the left and the right, so I threw in a left and a right crash, and then I sent it
to a Sunset Chamber.
Then I also sent it to a delay that I've got that's more like a crazy reverb type thing
going on.
So check this out right here.
[song]
Pretty sweet, right?
Cool.
And there's some other automation for some of the sections where I turn the big delay
on and off, but moving on from there, we've got down here, I send the shells of the kit
– the kick, snare, toms – I send this to a buss called “all drums.”
I treat those with a little bit of compression, I've got the VMR on there, a Clariphonic.
Just doing some basic processing here.
Then I have the drum crush.
Kind of – man, years ago, I think it was a Kenny Gioa tutorial where he had a parallel
1176.
That thing was even the Bomb Factory stock Pro Tools 1176, and he would send the drums
to both a drum buss, and a parallel drum compression buss, and he would smash it, blend it in to
taste, or the other way around.
I can't remember how he used to do it.
But for the longest time, I ran with that.
Then I saw Dave Pensado, and he used a more – at least, in the tutorial I saw – He
used parallel compression on the kick, and then he used it on the snare independent of
just sending everything.
I've kind of taken that in my mix template.
I have the option to do it for just the kick and just the snare, or toms or whatever, but
then I've also got a setup with the drum crush.
I watched the Bob Horn tutorial over at Pro Studio Live.
It was a good time.
Some good stuff, and he used the Drum Crush.
I saw some cool stuff from him, and then also Andrew Scheps had a tutorial with PureMix.
Hey, man, I'm teaching and doing my thing, but I'm a student first.
I'm always watching these guys and what they're doing.
But, he had it setup with a dbx 160.
I went a little further and threw the UAD Culture Vulture on there.
Pretty sweet preset, I can't remember what it was, but I dialed back the mix percentage
– I think it was like, crunchy drums or something like that.
FabFilter Saturn would be great here.
All kinds of things you could throw on to add a little bit of crunch to the drums, but
that's blended in with the original signal.
I'm automating these as well.
So let's take a look at that.
Here's the first one where you've got some stuff going on.
Check this out.
[song plays]
Pretty sweet, right?
So we've got that first hit that just smashes the drums and the cymbals to start the breakdown,
and then they build, and I'm actually even hearing that kick snare combo out here could
be a little bit more...
[song plays]
You know, what it is, that kick right there is kind of an underlying – okay.
And let's go kick, there...
Up, paste.
Then, I'm going to take this one out.
I don't need that.
Then I'll back it up to there.
There's a gate on that, so I'm not worried about that little...
Okay, then I'll see what that sounds like.
[song]
Still felt like I needed a little bit more from that kick, so I'm going to put a marker
there.
Just kind of trial and error to get this kick to come forward a little bit more.
We'll see what we can make happen here.
[music]
A little bit better.
We could probably use something maybe at the buss.
So let's come back down, take a look.
[music]
Pro Tools errors while I'm doing these videos.
Let's put that on the grid, maybe bump it up a little bit more.
[music]
Much chunkier.
So anyways.
[laughs] Writing automation to the all drums.
That's throughout the song at a couple of spots.
Let's take one more look at this one.
[song]
Cool.
So just helping out that build a little bit more.
There was a section where I automated the Drum Crush a little bit.
Let's check that out.
[song]
Nice, man.
Just little, subtle changes to help the mix not just sit still, we also had this.
The high end is where the metal of the kick goes.
Overheads, crashes, that kind of stuff.
Sometimes room mics, because I don't necessarily want the room mics to be compressed with the
drum buss.
Parallel compression.
I like to crush those independently and individually, and then know what I'm getting from them.
So then, I'll send those to high end as well sometimes.
I've got a little lift here at the cymbals.
[mix]
Just a little bit of automation to help the song kind of stand out.
Then a lot of times on the 2buss, I'll automate everything down a dB, then let the pre-chorus
come up half a dB, then let the chorus go up back to zero – another half dB to create
some impact there.
But, I felt like the arrangement was so good on this one, that it probably doesn't need
that, but who knows.
I'm still mixing it, so we'll see.
Anyways, I blabbed, a couple of rabbit trails in there, but I hope you dig it.
Go check out mixingdrums.com if you want to learn more on how I'm mixing drums.
This is a fun song.
This is going to be part of a mix contest coming up, so if you're interested in that,
stay tuned.
Keep your eyes peeled and join the list.
You'll get updates.
Davidglennrecording.com, theproaudiofiles.com.
I hope you're doing well, and I'll talk to you soon.
Thanks again.